Online, offline glitches dog voter registration

With just eight days to go for citizens to enroll as voters, problems have cropped up in the offline (Form 6) and online (via the internet) options.

| TNN | Updated: Mar 30, 2013, 04:17 IST

BANGALORE: With just eight days to go for citizens to enroll as voters, problems have cropped up in the offline (Form 6) and online (via the internet) options.
Smart Vote, an organization involved in voter registration and awareness, has printed 5,000 copies of Form 6 to be distributed among college students. Reason: forms are not available at many BBMP ward offices and even at the head office.

"We checked the ward offices in Bommanahalli, HSR Layout, JP Nagar, Jayanagar and Chickpet, but they didn't have copies of Form 6,'' says Manas Kumar Mahapatra, a software engineer at HP and volunteer for the voter-registration campaign.

"We're conducting this campaign in colleges. When our volunteers went to the ward offices to collect Form 6, officials there said they had run out of forms,''' says Prithvi Reddy of Smart Vote. The association then went to the BBMP head office, but that was of no use. When Sujitkumar Sahu checked with BBMP assistant commissioner (elections), he was told forms weren't available.

With respect to online registration, Vinod K Ramesh, a software engineer from Hebbal, says: "When I tried to sign in to register, I got the message 'Username and password don't match'. After three successive attempts, the account got deactivated.''

When Jayalakshmi asked for three copies of Form 6 at the Koramangala ward office, BBMP employees gave her one form and asked her to return it after taking photocopies. They received the filled-up application form, but didn't give her an acknowledgement.

The ward offices won't accept bulk (more than 10) Form 6 applications from one person. Though it's done to prevent vested interests from going for bulk additions, it has caused inconvenience to people who are trying to get voters to register.

"The registration staff at the ward office are revenue officials whose main job is to collect taxes. They don't take voter registration seriously. They have tax-collection targets. As this is the last month of the financial year, should they concentrate on collecting taxes or registering voters? As registration is a thankless job, they find fault and send people away,'' says S Gopal, a volunteer involved in the campaign.

When this was brought to the notice of the state chief electoral officer Anil Kumar Jha, he assured TOI that he would look into the problem. "As far as I'm aware, there's no shortage of Form 6 forms. Now, that it has come to my notice, I'll direct the BBMP commissioner to ensure that adequate forms are made available."

Volunteers from Smart Vote and other citizens say among the problems faced by applicants is a cryptic message: 'Please enter a valid mobile number'. These pop up when you put initials in the name field while registering as a new user.

Says Kavya Ramkumar, a resident of Jnanabharati ward: "After filling the form and submitting it, I get a page that says 'invalid fields' and hence am not able to generate an acknowledgement. This error was brought to the notice of election officials through helpline 1950, but there was no response.''

The process of deleting dead voters' names or changing any particulars of registered voters is not working online. "I tried changing my age, which has been registered as 356 years, to 36 but to no avail,'' says veterinarian Dr Anand Desai.

Jha rubbished these claims. "Everything is working fine''. He said they have only blocked the option of deleting and changing data as they found it ended up deleting or changing the information of other voters registered in the same name. "If they want to make changes, they are free to do it offline as there are eight more days.''

"At a time when government budgets are significantly strained, our antiquated paper system is costly. People believe online voter registration is the best option, but it's proving useless,'' says Commodore (retd) PG Bhat of the Bangalore Political Action Committee.

TIMES VIEW

Fix the voters' list. It's the least the government can do to enable people to vote. Sadly, it's failing miserably in this critical function and with the deadline for voters to register fast approaching, they're running out of patience to make sure their names are on the list. The state election commission believes everything is hunky dory on this front but promises to look into complaints. Volunteers working overtime to get people to register so that they can vote on May 5 are coming up with their own ingenious solutions. But it's the government's responsibility to sort out the mess.

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